Items Tagged with "Attacks"

With the way US forces are distributed globally, cyber capabilities and flexibilities are enhanced. Cyber, both offense and defense, can be launched from anywhere. All Combatant Commanders have liaisons and representative elements with geographic commands, Cyber Command is no different...

We are stuck in “Definitional Wars” or the struggle to get definitions approved that are not only accurate but widely accepted. A bigger problem is the constant evolution of technology and terminology, by the time a definition is published, it is usually obsolete...

Despite the use of cyber weapons and the damage caused by offensive operations being major concerns for intelligence agencies, clues are frequently discovered about attacks designed to steal sensitive information and intellectual property. Who is behind these cyber attacks?

Utilities have been computerizing their SCADA systems for years now. This has allowed them to save money, time and manpower and has increased their situational awareness and control flexibility. However, industrial control systems are usually not very robust and also very ‘dumb...

Cybercriminals are exploiting a new way to spread malware by preloading malicious code inside counterfeit software deployed in computers that are offered for sale. To give you an idea of the phenomenon, 20% of the PCs researchers bought from an unsecure supply chain were infected with malware...

In every war, civilians are the victims. If and when a nation state unleashes their cyber forces against another, the initial blow will most likely be crushing. The economy will grind to an immediate halt, and without communications most of what we know will cease to exist...

The security firm FireEye has released an interesting report that provides an overview of the current threat landscape, evolving malware, advanced persistent threat (APT) tactics, and the level of infiltration seen in organizations’ networks today. The report presents an alarming scenario ...

Forcing utility operators, banks, and earth resources companies to comply with frameworks based on outmoded asset and vulnerability methodologies will distract them from implementing threat based defenses. The Executive Order, if issued, will do much more harm than good...

Our testing of the “rdp-sec-check” tool showed it to be quite useful in determining the configuration of exposed Terminal Services and in hardening them. Keep in mind, it is likely useful to harden the Terminal Services implementations internally to critical systems as well...

The attacks appeared to be originated in China and aimed at dozens of other organizations who were hit, of which Adobe Systems and Juniper Networks confirmed the incident. The press is also convinced that other companies were targeted such as Morgan Stanley, Northrop Grumman and Yahoo...

Pandora’s box has been opened. All the players are taking the field, and many of them may not be ready to play a proper game… Shamoon did it’s thing, but it seems to be more a brute force tool than an elegant piece of code and a slick plan. The blowback though is yet to be determined...

Only after many years of beating the drum that non-security professionals are waking up to the fact that security cannot be an after-thought in development. It'll take another five years before business executives are comfortable with the notion that they will be breached...

We can continue to the bitter end, but the lesson we must learn is that Anonymous has now become a part of our daily life, an element with which every security expert will have to face sooner or later. Continuing to ignore the phenomenon of hacktivism is very dangerous...

An international treaty and regulatory body will not gain much traction in the military academies and think tanks around the world. Why restrict a nation’s options in war fighting – especially when cyber weapons are inexpensive and could reduce the overall level of force required to achieve an end goal?

W32.DistTrack, also known as “Shamoon,” is an information-stealing malware that also includes a destructive module. Shamoon renders infected systems useless by overwriting the Master Boot Record (MBR), the partition tables, and most of the files with random data. Once overwritten, the data are not recoverable...

With all the media hype over Stuxnet, cyber war and cyber weapons – should US citizens be legally allowed to own and use these weapons in accordance with their 2nd Amendment rights? Why shouldn’t Americans be allowed to actively defend themselves against online electronic risks as well as physical threats?